Yummy Onions

Recently, as part of the preparations for Heidelbeere's wedding, we were making tortellini soup.  This was for the wedding luncheon so we needed a lot of soup.  And, as you may know, tortellini soup includes yummy onions.  Heidelbeere was planning on about 55 people for the luncheon; lots of onions. Yep, and somebody had to chop up all those onions.

We have a cute little vegetable chopper at our house, but we hadn't taken it with us when we'd traveled out to the wedding.  Fortunately, Heidelbeere has exactly the same kind of cute little chopper.  They are wonderful for chopping veggies, including onions.  Anything to make chopping onions go quicker is welcome, so we got her chopper out and got to work.

This chopper is exactly the kind of thing that attracts kids, its fun to use.  So Heidelbeere's oldest wanted to use it.  However, she soon discovered that onions have a curious affect on anyone in the room when they're being chopped; they make you cry.  You know, syn-propanethial-S-oxide, the stuff that stimulates the eyes' lachrymal glands so they release tears.  Yeah, that stuff.  Personally, I can make it through about two onions before my eyes start watering.  Not so with most others. We had a whole bag of onions to chop, around ten or 15 of the wonderful little orbs.  And the onions that Heidelbeere was using were particularly potent.  

Undiscouraged, however, the little lady still wanted to use the chopper, even though everyone in the room was crying.  So she put some thought into it and came up with a plan to protect herself from the effects of chopping all those onions.

Alas, she soon discovered the goggles did not do much to protect her from crying.  Still it was fun to watch her try.  And in the end, she got to use the chopper as much as she wanted; she didn't last even two whole onions.  But she was happy, so success, right?  Right!